


Sonder (n.)

by peterpan_in_neverland



Series: have you ever felt things beyond the human language? [2]
Category: Never Have I Ever (TV)
Genre: 5+1, F/M, Grief, SO, alright I think thats it, also im really sorry, and it is the standard by which the others are measured, and poor understanding of Indian foods, and the rest of them kind of suck, but anyway here are some actual tags, but i still feel like im wrong, but like personally the fifth is my favourite, but the fifth one is very pretty, i did some hardcore googling, i mean theyre good, if you have any corretions for that stuff please let me know, im so excited, my first ever 5+1 fic, poor understanding of Triple-A (AAA?), poor understanding of bar mitzvahs, poor understanding of the dolby theatre, read it, specifically Tamil, take that as you will, this was kind of a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:38:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24600169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterpan_in_neverland/pseuds/peterpan_in_neverland
Summary: "His voice glides over her like honey, smooth and golden and intoxicating, and she’s realizing that honey is exactly what he smells like. Honey and lavender, and she isn’t sure when she found the scent on him endearing, but right now, it’s all she ever wants to smell."OR five times Ben and Devi realize the other is human, and the one time it changes things
Relationships: Ben Gross/Devi Vishwakumar
Series: have you ever felt things beyond the human language? [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1778254
Comments: 37
Kudos: 153





	Sonder (n.)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goldcarnations](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldcarnations/gifts).



> Wow I'm back and this whole obscure sorrows as titles thing is a series now. itll probably be multi-fandom (if thats a thing that AO3 allows) but there wont be any crossovers. I actually kind of dont really like crossovers. ANYWAY a few notes before you read, for people who dont read tags:
> 
> 1) I am neither Jewish nor Indian, so the Bar Mitzvah things I reference in here were learned purely by google searches, as were the references to Indian (mainly Tamil) foods. If there are any corrections that anyone who knows their shit can give, I'll gladly accept them and then alter the work accordingly.  
> 2) I dont drive, so I know nothing about Triple-A (AAA?).  
> 3) I dont drink and I've never been to a party, so I don't know if the situation outlined in the second scene fully makes sense. also, this is a random thing to add to this point, but Patty being Russian is purely theoretical. I have no idea where she could possibly be from, the Russian part just helped to advance the Plot (tm)  
> 4) the fifth scenario is honestly my favourite. It turned out the best, in my opinion  
> 5) this is partially unbeta'd because I have no patience, so if theres any issues, then, oops, yknow.  
> 6) im truly snapping by gifting this work to one of my favourite writers for the fandom, mostly because theyre one of my favourite writers but also because theyre a total sweetheart  
> 7) please leave a kudos if you enjoy and a comment if you really enjoy! They water my crops and clear my skin and keep me alive, so they are greatly, greatly appreciated

_ i. _

Ben Gross isn't typically someone she feels any sympathy for, but she can't stop the feeling that has gathered in the pit of her stomach when she looks at him from across the playground.

He has his skinny, too-small arms propped on a pair of shiny, silver crutches and his left foot encased in a bright red cast that ends just below his knee. He looks miserable, beads of sweat on his forehead and his eyes shiny, watching all the kids run and play on the asphalt while he stands by the wall. To top it all off, nobody but his housekeeper has signed his cast, in shaky Russian letters, with a poorly done drawing of what Devi can only assume is a sun with a face.

When Devi had broken her arm last year, in the third quarter of second grade, plenty of kids had signed her cast, drawing smiley faces and peace signs and hearts. But, Ben had gotten his cast three days ago, and no one has even asked to sign it. 

She shakes herself, trying to stifle the little bursts of feelings in her stomach that make her want to say hi to him. Ben has always been her worst enemy, and the least likely person she has ever expected to have any sympathy for. Yet, here she is, watching him as he takes turns staring between the ground and the swing set, completely alone.

When shaking her head rapidly doesn't work, she emerges from her hiding spot behind the big tree in their recess yard, and slowly makes her way over to Ben. She doesn't really know what she is going to say— or do— but she knows that she wants him to at least feel a little better. 

“Hi,” she says, waving her hand a little sheepishly. Ben looks up at her, and pushes his eyebrows together. He is scraping his fingernails against the squishy material on the handle of his crutches, and the noise is irritating Devi to no end. She tries not to entertain the suspicions that he’s doing it to annoy her, and possibly, to get her to leave.

“What do you want, David?” he asks, his voice acidic. She isn't used to it, not instantly feeling angry whenever she hears Ben's voice, but instead of infuriating her, this time it just makes her throat feel smaller. They always fight, always argue, and when she talks to him with arguing in mind, it doesn't bother her when he is rude. Now, though, when she wants to be kind, his bitterness upsets her.

“I was thinking—” 

“That's a  _ first _ .” 

“Shut up, Ben!” she shouts, stomping her foot, letting her upset get the better of her. She watches him react, his eyes widening and his scraping of his crutches halting. Instantly, it soothes her anger, and she gives him a half smile, just one corner of her mouth turned up.

“Fine,” he agrees, and takes half a step away from her— it is a production, watching him set his good foot down, then swinging his crutches back, lifting his foot back up to fall in line with his crutches— and it only makes her feel worse, makes her sudden and unwelcome tenderness towards him intensify. “Just… tell me what you want, then leave me alone.” 

She blinks, trying to process all of his demands, mixed with the sudden softening of his voice. She looks over him, once, and realizes that she could make good on her threat from last week to beat him up for making fun of how her lunch smelled ( _ paruppu sadam  _ wasn't her favourite meal in the world, but she isn’t going to let stupid Ben Gross make fun of it, or her). Strangely, though, she doesn't want to hit him. She just wants to make him feel at least a little better. 

“Do you have a Sharpie— not a fine point one, one like the kind that Mrs Ramsey gives us to make posters about words and animals and math,” she says, and wants to say more, but she cuts herself off when she realizes she has started to ramble. 

Ben is looking at her strangely, his mouth set in a hard line, and his eyes narrowed. “For what?” he asks, and she has to suppress the urge to correct him and say  _ “it’s “what for,” moron,”  _ even though she isn't entirely sure if that is actually true. She feels momentarily grateful that her urge to fight with him seems to be returning.

“To sign your cast,” she explains, and watches his face cycle through confusion, suspicion, some— hopefully— misplaced anger, then finally, to wary acceptance. 

“Why do you want to sign it?” 

“Can’t you just chill out and let me?” she asks, sounding more argumentative than she intends, “please?” 

He scans her, looking strangely at her face, before sighing. “Fine.” He pulls a black Sharpie from his pants pocket, and she tries not to picture him carrying it around, hoping someone will ask him to sign his cast, then being disappointed when no one does. “Here,” he says, holding it out to her, balancing his weight on one crutch. 

Devi takes it, and pulls the cap off, sticking it on the other end. She thinks briefly about asking him to sit down, then realizes she’d have to help him back up, and decides just to kneel down. She finds a good spot, one where he can see it, and writes fast, including more than just her name, then straightens back up. 

_ I hope your leg gets better soon, Ben _

_ -Devi (தேவி)  _

She puts the cap back on the Sharpie, then hands it back to him, smiling at him. She can’t remember the last time she had smiled at him, really smiled at him, not just one of her patented  _ I win, stupid  _ smug grins.

“Thanks, Devi,” he says, and hearing him call her by her actual name, not that stupid white people nickname he always uses, makes her feel like being nice to him is worth it. He looks down at his cast, scanning the words, and smiling faintly, before adopting a weird look on his face. “What  _ is  _ that?” he asks, motioning to the Tamil letters she had added. 

“It’s my name,” she says, like it is obvious, then realizes he needs more of an explanation, “in Tamil… your maid signed in Russian, so I just thought—” 

“Oh,” Ben says, interrupting her, and she prepares herself for him to make fun of her, to say something mean and then laugh at her until she walks away. But then, he surprises her, saying, “that’s actually… really neat.” 

She smiled at him wider, showing off the gap in her teeth (she had lost her first premolar, on the left side, the night before), and says, “thanks, Ben,” welcoming the warm feelings that courses through her stomach when he smiles at her.

Later that night, while her family sits around the table eating  _ puliyodarai _ and talking about the day, when her father askes, “what did you learn in school today,  _ kanna _ ?” 

Devi doesn’t hesitate to reply, through a mouthful of food, with, “that Ben Gross can be kind of nice.” 

-

_ ii. _

He doesn’t really know what he was thinking. 

Heena Magar had invited him to her twelfth birthday party, which, based on Ben's limited knowledge of parties, turns out to be a total rager. She has a few cases of beer and a stereo system that’s thumping a heavy bass beat. Heena’s oldest sister— Dalu— was supposed to be supervising, but according to Brian, she has her boyfriend over and they went upstairs to Dalu’s room to makeout. 

“Heads up, Gross,” Brian says, nudging Ben's shoulder. Heena had given him a beer, and it sloshes out of the can and onto the carpet when Brian bumps him, sinking into the shag in a shape that looks like Florida, “your worst nightmare just walked in.” 

“My worst— oh.” He turns around, catching sight of Devi Vishwakumar leaning against the wall by the basement stairs. She is chatting animatedly with Fabiola (who has her hair done in dozens of tiny braids, the ends slowly fading into a dark red colour, and even Ben has to admit it looks really good) and Eleanor, taking small sips from a CapriSun pouch. Instantly, he feels the desire to go over there and make fun of her for only drinking CapriSun, but then he remembers that the only time any beer has left his can was when Brian had bumped him. 

“Hey, watch this,” Brian says, his voice conspiratorial, and Ben feels a sick kind of worry settle onto his skin. He walks up to the built-in bar, opening another can of beer and emptying it into a red cup. He turns to Ben, winking at him, before walking over to Devi and her friends in his slow, swaggering pace.

Ben realizes what he is planning just a second too late, and he is frozen to his spot, watching as Brian faux trips, emptying the entire cup of beer over Devi’s clothes. He hears Devi shout, and her friends gasping, Fabiola jumping away from the splash.

“What the hell?” Devi shouts, dropping her CapriSun and holding her hands up. The entire front of her body is soaked, beer dripping from the ends of her hair, and soaking into her jeans and her shirt. 

“I tripped,” Brian tells her, lying through his teeth. He turns back to Ben, flashing him a smile, before facing Devi again. She is wiping her hands over her jeans, looking down at herself. Everything seems to be frozen, with even Fabiola and Eleanor shocked into stillness. “Let me help you out—” 

“Don’t  _ fucking  _ touch me!” she shouts, before shoving Brian away, and running up the stairs. Devi swearing like that— something Ben had never really heard her do before— restarts his body, and he follows her up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He makes it to the top of the stairs, his feet hitting the tile floor of the kitchen, and he scans the room quickly.

“Devi?” he says, voice shaky, and starts to feel worried when he doesn't hear her answer. He stands in the center of the kitchen, trying to listen for her over the vague buzzing of music from Heena’s party. 

“Eleanor, is that— ugh, go away, Ben,” Devi says, appearing from one of the hallways. She is  _ soaked  _ in the beer, her clothes sticking to her skin and her hair shining with it. 

“Let me help,” he says, not sure where his kindness comes from. 

“Do you think I’m stupid?” she asks, looking at him like he’s gum she has stepped in on the sidewalk. “You put Brian up to this, I’m not letting you even get near me.” 

He lets her accusation slice through him like a blade, stinging his skin and making his throat feel hot. “You think I told Brian to do that?” 

“Obviously.” 

“No,” he says, almost like he is pleading, begging for her to believe him, “that’s just crappy. I’d never—” 

“I don’t need this from you.” 

“Does this  _ actually  _ seem like something I’d do to you?” he asks, gesturing up and down her body. He knows he sounds offended, but he doesn’t care. He fights with her everyday, slinging insults and saying rude things, but he never  _ actually  _ wants her to get hurt, and, until now, he thought that she knew that. “To  _ anyone _ ?” 

She looks at him, and he feels like he is being read like a book. He knows she doesn't actually know him that well, but the look she is giving him would’ve fooled anyone. For just a moment, she looks like she knows every secret he has ever kept, every lie he has ever told, like she knows him better than anyone else in the world. “No,” she finally says, sighing, letting the tension out of her shoulders, “it’s too, I don't know,  _ juvenile _ for you to have done it.” 

“So, can I help you?” he asks, catching her eye. 

“Yes, fine,” she agrees, pulling a hand through her hair, “what do you suggest?” 

“Um,” he says, and looks down at the ground. He didn’t really think he would get this far. “We need to get you dry.” He motions towards the bathroom, and she nods, disappearing back inside of the doorway.

That is how he spends his time at the party, locked in a bathroom with his worst enemy, rubbing paper towels over her jeans and helping her dry out her hair after she washes it in the sink, trying to get the beer out. They talk, chatting idly and swapping stories about classes they don’t have together, lamenting about idiotic classmates and rude teachers.

She still smells like beer when they step out of the bathroom after her mom has texted that she is there to pick Devi up, managing to maintain a well-built sense of temporary camaraderie.

She is kneeled down, tying the laces of her tennis shoes, hands shaking— he knows she is worried about her mom smelling the beer on her, and then having to explain it— when Ben has an idea. 

“Take my hoodie,” he says, not giving himself any time to overthink it. 

“What?” she asks, her nose wrinkled, standing up straight, and looking him over suspiciously.

“You’re worried about your mom smelling the beer— take my hoodie, that’ll help.” He starts to pull his hoodie over his head, pushing aside any embarrassment he feels over the acne on his arms. 

“Ben, I can’t,” she protests, but he is already handing it to her, trying to look as sincere and kind as possible. She looks apprehensive, but takes it anyway. “Turn around.” 

“What?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. “Why?” 

“So I can change,” she says, and he sucks in a breath, realizing what she's saying, but obliges. He listens to the soft rustling noises as she changes, then turns back around after she tells him it was okay. 

He isn’t expecting it, to like seeing her in his hoodie— it’s a generic Dodgers one, but it is still his, and she is wearing it. It’s just big enough on her to look like it belongs to someone else, and the soft, unnamable feelings that the sight of her wearing it, her slim fingers toying with the hem, sends through his stomach and up his spine startles him. 

He’s never seen her the way he had seen her tonight. She had laughed with him, and had been honest, almost vulnerable while he scrubbed at her jeans and squeezed soap into her hair. He had never had the chance to think of her as someone complex, someone with problems, like him. He had always seen her just as an enemy, someone to fight with, to beat. Tonight, with Brian and his beer, the eucalyptus soap in the hall bathroom and Ben's Dodgers hoodie, proved that Devi is human. 

“Thank you,” she says, and pulls her hair out from the neck of his hoodie, “for your sweatshirt, and, y‘know, for your help.” 

“You’re welcome,” he says, and for a quick moment, he thinks she is going to hug him. Then, her phone chimes and she swears softly under her breath. She shoves her shirt into his arms, not bothering to explain why. 

“That’s my mom, I have to go,” she says, walking backwards towards the front door, “I’ll give you back your hoodie on Monday— and this doesn’t change anything, I’m still smarter  _ and  _ cooler than you.” 

He laughs, and doesn’t even try to fight her on the accuracy of her statement. “Bye, Devi. Get home safe.” 

She smiles, looking at him a little strangely, her eyes sparkly. He likes that. “You too, Ben.” 

-

_ iii.  _

At twelve-years-old, Devi Vishwakumar is sure about three things: 

Number one: her mom has it out for her. She wouldn’t have made Devi come here if she didn’t, and despite her mother’s excuse (“Ben Gross is a smart boy and this is a big moment for him!”), nothing will convince Devi otherwise. 

Number two: the Dolby Theatre doesn't deserve the bad reviews that Ben Gross’s Bar Mitzvah will surely deliver unto it (possibly by her hands, she hasn’t decided yet). The Dolby Theatre hosts the Oscars, for God's sake, it certainly hasn’t earned whatever bad karma it is getting that has resulted in it being the landing ground of Ben's Bar Mitzvah. 

Number three: Nick Jones is the prettiest man she has ever seen, and the one in forty-six trillion chance (she knows it exactly, Fabiola had run the numbers) that he will be at the Dolby Theatre at just the right moment for her to bump into him, spilling fruit punch over her dress, forcing him to give her his jacket, almost makes being here worth it. Especially if his loaning her jacket led to the exchanging of their phone numbers, which lead to them falling in love. That would make it  _ completely  _ worth it. 

She is contemplating the venue for her and Nick Jonas’s wedding, when she catches sight of Ben running up a set of stairs, two at a time, his face pink, and his breath laboured. Instantly, she feels a little worried for him, but she can’t figure out why.

“What the hell?” Devi mutters to herself (after the incident at Heena’s party, she had decided to take up swearing, because she feels like it makes her sound a bit more grown up, and therefore more likely to be able to seduce Nick Jonas), and decides to follow him. 

She stays a reasonable distance behind him— she has watched enough Law & Order to know that you should never follow a suspect too closely— but stops short when she sees him duck into a bathroom. She tries to think about the chances of someone seeing her walk into a men’s bathroom at the Dolby Theatre, but then she decides she doesn't really care, and she pushes the door open. 

“Ben?” she asks, deciding to close her eyes, just in case he isn’t— a shudder goes through her—  _ decent _ . “Are you—” 

“What the hell, David!” Ben's voice hisses, vaguely in the direction of a row of stalls she caught a glimpse of when she opened the door. “I know you’re  _ barely  _ a girl and all, but this is the men’s room.” 

“I followed you in here,” she explains, opening her eyes.  _ So this is what boys bathrooms look like _ , she thinks, scanning her eyes over the room. If she is being honest, it looks pretty much exactly the same as women’s bathrooms, just dirtier. And with urinals. 

“That doesn’t make you sound any less crazy,” Ben says. His voice seems a little hoarse, but other than that, he sounds fine. Devi starts to kick herself for misjudging the situation, and following him into the bathroom for what is turning out to be less than nothing.

“I just… I was worried about you, okay?” she admits, and leans against the wall. “I saw you run up here, and I was just worried that you weren’t alright.” 

“I’m fine, just leave” he says, and she instantly knows he is lying when she hears the unmistakable sound of him gagging. A tingle of nerves runs up her spine, and the anxiety pulses throughout her nervous system. Her hands feel like there are ants crawling over them.

“Ben?” she asks, standing up straight. He’s quiet, not saying anything, and she instantly starts to panic. “Ben, answer me, please.” 

“Get out.” 

“You’re sick,” she says, walking around to the locked stall door, and putting her hand against it. 

“I’m not sick, I’m just…” he trails off, sighing, his voice sounding raw and scraped. She feels worry shoot through her stomach, and her knees start to get a little shaky at the prospect of dealing with him puking. 

“Just what?” 

“I was having a panic attack— I’m fine now, my stomach just hurts and I don’t think I can leave the bathroom,” he says, verging on rambling, and Devi isn't sure how to reply. She doesn’t even really know why she  _ cares _ . They aren’t friends, in fact, they are enemies. She hates him. 

At least, she thought she did.

But, this is his birthday— his Bar Mitzvah— and he’s sitting on the gross tiled floor of a bathroom in the Dolby Theatre, being sick, and missing his party. His friends. The celebration of his entrance into manhood, as horrible and gross as that sounds.

She sighs, pulling off her jacket and setting it carefully on the floor, then sitting down. “If you can’t go to your party,” she says, working carefully to avoid touching any part of the floor, “then I won’t, either.” 

“Why the hell would you do that?” Ben asks, and she starts to fish for an answer in the alphabet soup that his question has turned her brain into. She rotates through a few explanations— that it is his birthday, that she isn’t a  _ total  _ monster, that the party is kind of overrated, that the bathroom is actually sort of nice (a lie)— before deciding on the repaying of a favour. 

“You missed out on Heena’s party for me,” she explains, and shrugs, hoping she didn’t sound as emotional as she felt, “figured I should owe you one.” 

“Oh.” He sounds absurdly disappointed, and she realizes that that might have been the wrong choice. That it sounds like she  _ doesn’t  _ want to help him. If shes being honest, she doesn't know why she wants to help him, just that she has an unnameable feeling in the pit of her stomach and on the tips of her fingers that she can’t leave him alone. 

“And, y’know… I care about you.” 

Ben scoffs. “No, you don’t.” 

“Not like, in a friendly way,” she says, moving to defend herself, “more like… respectful enemy way.” 

““Respectful enemy?”” he parrots, his voice sounding lighter. Devi counts it as a victory, even if it is at her expense. 

“Yeah, like… Perry the Platypus and Dr Doofenshmirtz.” 

“You did  _ not _ just compare us to a cartoon.” 

“I think I did.” 

“Wait,” Ben says, “who’s Perry, and who’s Doofenshmirtz?” 

“You’re Doofenshmirtz,” she says, immediately. It is a no brainer, he has unchallengeable dysfunctional supervillain energy.

“So you’re willingly calling yourself a platypus?” he asks. She knows he is only doing it to try to poke holes in her comparison, but she takes the bait anyway, because it’s his birthday. 

“An  _ animated  _ platypus that fights crime,” she corrects, “but, yes.” 

She hears the stall door unlock, and she turns her head. The door opens, and Ben is standing there. “I’m gonna remember that,” he says, the corner of his mouth turned up. 

“Ben, oh my God!” she shouts, her voice reverberating against the shining tile of the bathroom, looking him up and down. He looks thoroughly wrecked; his face is red and blotchy, his lips swollen, and she can see sweat stains on the collar of his shirt. “This is gonna sound mean, but, you look like shit.” 

“You’re right,” he says, pulling off his suit jacket, “that does sound mean.” 

“I mean it more out of concern,” she clarifies, cringing. He sets his jacket down next to her, then sits on it, leaning against the wall. 

“I know you did.” He turns his head, pressing one of his cheeks against the cool tile of the bathroom wall. “Why are you being so nice to me?” 

“I already told you,” she says, looking at him strangely, “ _ please _ don’t tell me you’re forgetting things.” 

“Your reason was bullshit.” 

“Hey!” 

“What?” he asks, blinking slowly. “It was.” 

“It was  _ not _ ,” she argues, even though she knows it is pointless. 

“Seriously, David, you can't expect me to believe that you care about me,” he says, then quieter, “no one does.” 

“Excuse me?” Devi says, sitting up, instantly feeling insulted. He doesn't believe that she cares about him? Sure, they fight— actually, that's all they really do— but that doesn't mean she wants him to suffer, or feel as bad as he seems to now. 

“Nothing.” 

“Ben, people care about you,” she says, and is seized by a heady recklessness that made her tap her fingers underneath his chin. He opens his eyes. “Your friends, Patty, me— there’s, like, four hundred people downstairs that are here because they care, Ben.” He is looking at her so strangely, his eyes bright and his face vulnerable. He has never looked at her like that, like he trusts her, like he has feelings and emotions beyond contempt, anger and pride. “So, just, stop worrying.”

He smiles at her, unsticking his cheek from the wall, and nods his head. “I guess you’re right.” He stands up, then picks up his jacket, shaking it out before throwing it over his shoulder. “Gonna have to get that dry cleaned.” 

“For sure, Ben.” She starts to get up, then pauses when she sees his hand outstretched, offering to help her. “You’re not gonna, like, drop me on the ground, right?” 

“I’m not a complete dick, David.” 

She rolls her eyes at him, but takes his hand anyway, letting him pull her up to her feet. His hand is warm, but a little sweaty, probably because he had spent twenty minutes on a bathroom floor. 

“Mazel tov, by the way,” she says, bending down to grab her jacket from the ground, “you’re a man, now— barely.” 

“And it’ll be another fifteen years before you're anywhere _ near _ being a woman, David.” 

“You’re only a man now because you read off the Torah,” she argues, walking around to the row of fancy sinks. She turns one on, sticking her hands under the hot water. It feels good, like it is forcing normalcy back into her skin. “You still have the voice of an eight-year-old girl.” 

“And you still sound like a moron.” She rolls her eyes, and dries off her hands. Strangely, he holds the bathroom door open for her, and she ducks out of it, not waiting to see if he is following her. 

“I’d only sound like that if I repeated everything you say, Gross.”

“ _ Ouch _ .” He has caught up to her, and he almost sounds like he was talking directly in her ear, sending shivers down her back. She’s thankful when the noise of the party starts to come back into earshot. “You wound me, Vishwakumar.” 

“You haven’t even come close to hurting my feel—  _ hey _ !” He grabs her arm right as they reach the staircase, and pulls her back from view. He let go of her arm, and she is ready to swing a solid right hook directly into his cheekbone, but she stops short when she sees the look on his face.

“Thank you,” he says, his eyes pouring into hers (they are blue, so blue, bluer than she has ever thought eyes can be), “for waiting with me, and going into a men’s bathroom.” 

“You’re welcome.” She’s ready to turn around, to go back down the stairs and tuck herself away in the corner and hope that Brian won’t come by with a cup of beer, but then Ben pulls her against him, wrapping his arms around her waist. 

She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t try to fight him on it. She knows he needs this, needs some kind of comfort, needs some kind of warmth. So, she wraps her arms around his neck, pulling him closer to her, letting his fingers press against the fabric of her clothes until he pulls away. 

He looks embarrassed, his face red, so she punches him on the shoulder, smiling. “Go enjoy your party, Ben,” she says, “if I’m not wrong, you still have to get carried around on a chair.” 

“It’s called the Hora, David.” 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” 

-

_ iv. _

Ben taps his feet against the floor, his knees bouncing. He didn’t think he was in trouble— he certainly hasn’t done anything— but the office aide that had escorted him down to Principal Grubbs office didn’t seem very happy. He had even held the door open for her and thanked her, but she still looked angry. 

“Ben?” Principal Grubbs says, and his head shoots up. She lookes exactly like she always does: overworked and a little annoyed, but he can tell there was something underneath of it, something that he can’t place. Ben is usually very good at reading people— a side effect of being cripplingly lonely for most of his life— so not being able to tell what Grubbs is thinking makes him start to collect handfuls of worry like daisies.

“Yes, Ms Grubbs?” he answers, standing up. He feels the anxiety from his knee bouncing disperse into the rest of his body, and instantly, his hands start shaking. He tucks them into his pockets. 

“Get in here, please,” she says, disappearing into the doorway of her office. Ben takes a deep breath, then blows it out, letting his cheeks fill up. He follows her.

He hasn’t been in Principals Grubbs office before, and he isn’t sure what he had been imagining— actually, he was completely sure. He had been picturing Miss Trunchbull's office, from  _ Matilda _ , and he isn’t really sure why. Principals Grubbs office, however, is fairly standard, with family photos and plaques and certificates on the walls and on her desk.

“What did you want me in here for?” He asks, pulling out a chair and sitting down. His knee starts bouncing again, and he instantly hates himself for it. 

“I’m sure you know about everything that’s going on with Devi,” she says, and he feels himself stiffen, time slowing down. 

Ben had always liked Mohan. He had been so nice to Ben, offering to let him join in on Devi’s victory dinners after every elementary school spelling bee. He always told the best jokes, and he handed out pieces of Trident chewing gum and Indian mango candies at school plays and showcases. 

When Mohan died— in front of Devi, at her spring orchestra, her first concert in her high school career— and Ben had found out, he had cried. He didn’t tell anyone, least of all Devi, but he had cried. He knew how much Mohan had meant to her, and secretly, to him, so his death had hurt him, too. 

He—stupidly— doesn’t realize how much it hurt Devi until the week after his passing, when she shows up in a wheelchair, her bag sitting on her lap and her face upsettingly sad. Principal Grubbs says something stupid about it not being contagious, and then Devi wheels herself to her spot and puts her head down on the desk. She doesn’t lift it up the entire class period. 

Ben knows that her grades have slipped, at least a little, because he gets an email notifying him that he is now the top of the class. Devi had been in that spot for six weeks. 

So, yes, he knows what is going on with Devi.

“Yeah, I know,” he says, skipping over the complexities. 

“I was wondering,” Principal Grubbs starts, leaning forward, “if you could cut her some slack.” 

He pushes his eyebrows together. “What?” 

“I know you two have some sort of feud going on— the junior high principal took it upon himself to warn me, actually— so I’m asking you, respectfully, to back off.” 

“Oh.” If he is being honest, he hasn’t even thought about easing up on Devi. Their constant arguing feels as natural to him as breathing, and the last thing he would consider to try to help her is putting that on hold. 

“You think that's something you can do?” Grubbs asks, her voice soft. Ben considers it for a moment, then takes a deep breath, nodding his head. 

“If you think that’s something that would help her,” he says, his knees bouncing faster than they were when he had walked in, “then yes, of course.” 

“Thank you, Ben.” Grubbs shows him to the door, walking him out, and giving him a late slip to his next class. 

For the next four days, Ben leaves Devi alone. He doesn’t try to beat her to answering questions in math class, he doesn’t show off his test scores in chemistry, and he doesn’t even open his mouth to insult her back when she insults him. It drives him a little crazy (his skin is getting itchy, and he isn’t sure if he had some type of invisible chicken pox or if it is because of all his bottled insults). 

When Devi wheels up to him after AP Biology— their last class of the day— he is sure she is going to fling an insult his way for his sudden inability to name the muscles of the human hand, but instead, she surprises him. 

“Ben, can we talk?” she asks, her face serious. He has no idea what she could possibly ask him to talk about— they have next to nothing in common— but he nods anyway, following her into an empty classroom. 

“What did you want to talk—  _ ow _ , Devi, what the hell?” She had punched him. Hard. It was a good punch, directly onto his ribs, and he is impressed at how bad it hurts, given the weird angle that the punch had come from. 

“Why are you treating me like some sort of fucking baby?” she asks, tossing her bag onto a desk. 

“What?” Ben asks, too distracted by the ache in his ribs to process what she is saying. 

“Either you got  _ way  _ dumber overnight,” she says, and he shakes his head, trying to pinpoint her destination before she gets there, “or you’re taking pity on me or something.” 

“ _ What _ ?” Ben says again. He knows what she is saying, but he really doesn’t want to admit to Devi that he has agreed to be nice to her. 

“Maybe you did get dumber all of a sudden—” 

“I am  _ not  _ dumb,” he argues, unable to resist it. 

“Then why are you acting like it?” she asks, and moves to punch him again. He dodges it, jumping back. 

“Stop trying to punch me!” Ben shouts, genuinely angry. He can’t remember the last time he had been truly angry with her— probably eighth grade, when she had “accidentally” knocked over his science fair project. His anger had subsided quickly, though, when she lost first place to Caitlin Fulton. 

“Stop being so nice to me!” Devi counters, crossing her arms. She has set her lips in a hard line, her eyes dark and stormy. He never thought he would see the day where Devi wants him to be mean to her, yet here he was.

“Sure,” he says, and feels a weight lift off of his chest, “but, you have to explain to me why you  _ don’t  _ want me to be nice.” 

“Ugh,” she scoffs, rolling her eyes. She pulls the brake on her wheelchair, and starts to push herself around the room in an oval. 

“Well?” 

“It just feels weird, okay?” she says, and doesn’t stop pushing her chair. He wants her to be still, so he can look at her while she talks, but he knows better than to try to touch her chair. That is  _ weird _ , and he isn’t going to do it, not even if she is his worst enemy. 

“You’re gonna have to do better than that, David.” 

She blows out a breath and, finally, stops pushing herself around the room. She puts the brake back on her chair after moving around to face him. She isn’t at the same height as him, and he feels weird about having to talk down to her, so he sits down at a desk, setting his bag on the floor. 

“I can handle everyone else treating me like I’m all special and breakable  _ except  _ you,” she explains, her voice soft. She is staring at her hands, picking at her nail polish. It’s blue, with little white polka dots. “My dad died. I'm in a wheelchair. And it  _ sucks _ , and I appreciate your sympathy and everything, I really do, you don’t know how much, but I just can’t handle it long term.” 

“Oh.” 

“I mean, even Fabiola and Eleanor are being a little different around me— they don’t ask me to go to movies anymore, and they keep offering to help me with stuff that they  _ never  _ did before and I just,” she sighs, and blows a strand of hair out of her eyes, “it’s driving me crazy.” 

“I get it,” he says, because he really does. He hasn't lost anyone like that, and has never been in a wheelchair before, but he knows that the pervasive sympathies you receive after something bad happens can begin to feel more like insults after awhile. 

“Thank you,” she replies, sounding like she’s a little surprised, “I mean, I know the fact that I’m an actual human with real feelings might be shocking, but it’s true.” 

He chuckles softly. “Okay, David. You want me to walk with you to the parking lot?” 

“Ew, no.” 

“Okay, your loss.” 

Later that night, as he eats dinner, alone, he thinks about what Devi had said about her having actual feelings. It doesn’t shock him. It doesn’t even surprise him, if he’s being honest. He knows she has feelings, everyone does, and he had learned it specifically on the night that Brian had dumped his beer over her. Today, though, displayed the lengths of her complexities. And the strange, floating feeling in Ben's chest makes him feel like he wants to know each one of them. 

He wants to dissect the parts of her, to understand the moments and experiences that have culminated into the final being that is Devi. There is so much of her to learn, to understand, and today is his first experience with the version of Devi that is unafraid to be vulnerable.

And he wants to see that version again.

-

_v._

She jerks awake, sitting up in bed, gasping for breath. Her body is on fire. There’s a heaviness— delirious, almost— that settles over her body when she wakes up after a nightmare, and she can feel it in her bones, her body locking up and her joints aching.

She hasn’t had a nightmare like that— visceral, real, so horribly believable that she expected to be in the school parking lot when she opened her eyes— in a long time. Not since her dad had died, in front of her, four and a half weeks before her fifteenth birthday. 

But, this one was different. 

They had always featured her dad dying, his death on loop, and she usually wakes up shouting. This time, though, it was her mother. Her mom, clutching her chest and collapsing, dying on the ambulance ride to the hospital, not her dad. 

And it is all her fault. 

This never would have happened, she never would have started having nightmares like this if she hadn’t told her mom that she wished she had died.

It is still swirling around in her mind, every moment of the fight they had before she said it, said  _ “I wish you were the one that died that night,”  _ and slammed her bedroom door in her mom's face. She didn’t mean it. She didn’t know why she said it. But, she can’t take it back now.

Especially not now. Running away to Ben's house has to be the final nail in the coffin that was her relationship with her mother. She cannot fix it now, cannot unsay something she didn’t even know she had thought. She can’t undo what has to be the biggest heartbreak her mom has ever felt.

She is hit with a sudden, grappling, overwhelming need to make sure that Ben is alright. That he is breathing, drooling, snoring, whatever he does in his sleep. She just needs to see him, needs to brush her fingers over the skin on his lip to feel his breath, to make sure he’s alive. 

The gravity of her need to check into him makes her body feel heavy, like she’s drenched in water, but she pushes the thick Doobie Brothers comforter off of herself anyway, walking quickly in mismatched socks,  _ down the hallway, take a left, and when you pass the potted plant on a shelf on the wall, you’re there. _

Those are the instructions on how to get to his room that Ben had given her, and his added,  _ come if you need anything, anytime,  _ is lacing itself into her brain stem, becoming one with the vital ways that she functions. It scares the shit out of her, in a million and one different ways, that he has become so essential to her life, to her day-to-day, but she pushes it all aside as she turns the doorknob to his room. 

The door swings open, and Devi is almost offended by the decor— or lack thereof— that she’s able to see in the hazy, half-darkness of the moonlight coming through his window. He has a poster of an Andy Samberg movie she has never even heard of (she’s sure that Brooklyn Nine-Nine is better, anyway) above his bed and his walls are painted grey. Or white. Or something equally boring, equally opposite to her bedroom walls at home. She thinks, for a brief moment, that they are like Newton’s third law of motion, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and that maybe every person on Earth has their equal opposite. That  _ Ben _ is her equal opposite.

When she finally allows her eyes to flit down to his bed, he’s sleeping on his back. It freaks Devi out when she first sees him, because he looks horrifically like a corpse, his arms at his sides, and Devi hates it. He sleeps like someone has taught him how to sleep, like he has taken lessons and absorbed every one of them, and she wants desperately to wake him up, to see him sleeping like a normal person. 

She needs to hear his voice. 

She needs to hear him talk to her, to tell her some bragging, probably fake story about one of the celebrities his father works with, to look at her the same way he has always looked at her. She needs to see his eyes, to see if they’re as blue in the dark as they are in the light. But, she’s frozen. She can’t move, can't make herself wake him up. There is a perfectly relaxed quality to the way he sleeps— even if his body looks robotic— his face is calm, tempered, the kind of peaceful reserved for people who have found everything they have ever wanted in their life, and apparently, Ben is able to access that when he sleeps. 

She takes a few steps back, her body unlocking, and the glow of one of the fancy decorative landscape lights outside of his window catches the shiny gold logo on the box of See's Candies she had brought sitting on his dresser. The lid is off, and a few of the chocolates are missing. 

(Devi knows which ones they are. She knows his favourite chocolates, just like she knows his favourite movies, books, video games, TV shows, classes, and she’s terrified at the fact that she knows him so well. How long has she known him like this? Has it been her whole life, and she didn’t even notice? Does he know her this well, too? And why does the thought that he might not know her like that make her bones ache, her blood move slower, her teeth grind together?) 

She approaches the box, and looks at it, studying it the same way she studies her textbooks. She grabs a foil wrapper, and deliberately crinkles it, immediately turning to look at Ben. He’s still asleep, so she knocks over a trophy on his dresser. 

He startles, sitting up, and Devi feels twenty-five pounds lighter. He rubs a hand down his face, then narrows his eyes, and Devi doesn’t even realize she’s crying until he’s made this soft, drawn out  _ oh  _ noise in the back of his throat. 

She has covered her mouth with her right hand and leaned over, doubling into herself in the time it takes Ben to wake up enough to walk over to her. He pulls her up straight, unfolding her to her full height, and wraps his arms around her. His fingertips press into her spine, like he’s trying to find and label each of her vertebrae, and she has never been more grateful for the size of his hands and his heart. She’s collapsed into him, the weight of her and her heartache leaning into him heavily, and she is surprised that he’s still holding her upright. 

She pulls back, reaccepting her weight after what seems to her like the rest of her sophomore year. Ben is looking at her like he has never looked at anything else, like he was fashioned for her, to fight with her when she feels fiery and to keep her on her feet when she feels extinguished. 

“Do you want to sit down?” he asks her, a new quality to his voice that she can only describe as smoky. He gestures weakly at his bed (it’s barely a bed, actually. It looks like a floating mattress. He has no headboard and the legs of the bed frame aren’t even visible. Devi isn’t sure where they are). 

She nods, because she thinks her voice will sound crackly and pathetic, and she all but throws herself onto his bed. She feels almost shitty about the way she collapses onto it, grabbing a pillow and squeezing it against her body. 

The mattress dips when Ben sits down on the other side of it. She hears him sigh, something borderline content, but stops herself from turning to look at him. “Do you want to talk to me?” he asks her. His voice glides over her like honey, smooth and golden and intoxicating, and she’s realizing that honey is exactly what he smells like. Honey and lavender, and she isn’t sure when she found the scent on him endearing, but right now, it’s all she ever wants to smell. 

“I just… I think I really, really screwed up, Ben,” she tells him, and her voice sounds watery and weak and strung out, like she’s spent lifetimes screaming. 

“You can fix it.” He sounds so sure of it, so positive that she can undo everything that she’s done, and she would have laughed if she didn’t feel so miserable. 

“I don’t think I can,” she’s dangerously close to tears again, her eyes and throat hot, “God, my dad would be so disappointed in me— I would be breaking his fucking heart if he saw everything I’ve done.” She had been thinking it for days, since she had run away, but saying it out loud makes it feel impossibly real. She knows about her mom's disappointment in her, knows that it is constant and impossible to overcome, but the complete certainty that her dad would be let down by her feels like her heart is collapsing in on itself. 

She hears Ben draw in a long breath beside her, like he needs to inhale her words and exhale his reply. His persistent silence makes her skin feel tight, and she turns to look at him. 

His hands are propped beneath his head, making a diamond with his arms. His face is even, but he is so clearly, horribly, upsettingly crying. The tear tracks on his face make her heartbeat slow down. Her guilt multiplies.

“That’s not true, Devi,” he says, and his voice is thick and choked and Devi wants to pull the sadness out of his body with her bare hands, because he does not deserve this. “Your dad  _ adored  _ you, with everything he was. You were the thing he was most proud of.” 

“I doubt—” 

“ _ Don’t  _ say that,” Ben says, “please, please, don’t say something like that.”

Devi pivots, because the thought of upsetting Ben— even more than she already has— is crushing her. “This never would have happened if he was here. But he’s not, and I’m supposed to make him proud and honour his memory, but instead I ran away and said something  _ so _ shitty to my mom.” 

Ben doesn’t try to reason with her resolve, because he never does, she realizes, because he knows that there’s no point. “There is nothing,” he finally says, his voice measured, the kind of tone he adopts when he gives speeches and presentations, “between you and your mom that you can’t fix.” 

Devi is silent for a long time, because she knows that he is right. “I just wish he was still here.” 

She feels Bens fingers on her arm, and he pulls her hand away from the pillow she’s gripping onto. Slowly, tentatively, carefully, he laces his fingers in between hers. He is tracing circles on her hand when he says, “me, too.” 

“What?” Her voice is hushed, because she doesn’t want to ruin whatever it is between them that has bloomed from between their fingers. She wants it to last forever, wants to take clippings and plant it in her backyard and take care of it until the day she dies. 

“When your dad died, I was crushed,” he tells her, “nothing  _ close  _ to what you felt, obviously, but I just— I felt like I lost him, too, y’know? He always told me he was proud of me whenever I got second place to you, like that was  _ anywhere  _ as good as what you got. I don’t know, it just… I don’t know.” 

Devi is feeling everything at once. She’s shocked and sad and scared and soaring and she is shaking, her entire body, and she knows that Ben can feel it in her fingers because he squeezes her hand. Like this is normal. Like he knows how to comfort her. 

She knows that her mom misses her dad, misses him with everything that she is, and she knows that Kamala feels their grief. But she has been so focused on herself, focused on her missing him and her desire to not want to hurt so bad, to not think about it, to not have to dissect and describe the enormity of the things that she is feeling, that she has never thought to consider the people outside of her small family that her dad had touched. That they are feeling things similar to what she is feeling. Will always feel. She realizes, sadly, that she is never going to feel right or good or better about him, and a part of her never wants to.

“I’m sorry, Ben.” She rolls over, setting the pillow aside and leaning into him, tucking her head into the space between his jawline and his shoulder, drinking in the floral honey scent of his skin. 

“Can I tell you something kind of stupid?” he asks, and his voice moves through her entire body. 

She pushes aside the obvious jab his wording hands out to her, and says, “sure.” 

“I used to think that dead people went to the moon,” Ben says, and he sounds almost nostalgic. The way he sounds now, the cadence to his voice, makes her think of sitting on a porch and watching fireflies hovering in the air, like tree frogs singing, like every magical dusk moment of her childhood. “When I was really little.” 

“That’s not stupid,” she tells him, and she’s being honest. If anything, it’s charming, sweet, almost. 

“My grandma died when I was seven. It wasn’t, like, anything I was crushed about. She was old, and sick, and I didn’t see her that often, but she was still my grandma.” 

“Okay.” She wants him to keep talking, to talk forever, as long as it’s childhood secrets and stories and these small, unspoken, buried parts of him. 

“And something happened— I don’t even remember what it was, actually— but, for some reason, I wanted to tell her about it. So, I just, I talked to the moon. Like it was my grandma.” 

She isn’t sure what to say to him. She never knows how to reply to confessions, she knows that. She didn’t know how to reply when Fabiola told her that she’s gay, she didn’t know how to comfort Eleanor about her mom. She didn’t know how to react, what to do, when a small woman in a white coat with a stethoscope around her neck and deep-seated, long-lived sadness behind her eyes told Devi and her mom that her dad had died in the ambulance. 

So, she says nothing. And Ben says nothing, either. She lays there, his heartbeat on her cheekbone, until she falls asleep, thinking about talking to the moon tomorrow. 

-

_ \+ i  _

Ben's perception of Devi shifts one hundred and eighty degrees the day after Princeton sends out their acceptance letters.

He knows that Devi got in— he can tell by the ear to ear smile on her face— and when he prepares himself for the inevitable bragging, it never comes. Instead, she slides into her seat in front of him, tossing her hair over her shoulder, and pulling her notebook from her bag. Ben is so stunned that he says nothing until Ms Cabot asks him to answer a question, ignoring Devi’s raised hand in front of him. 

When they leave the class, Devi breezes past him, arranging her bag so it sits more comfortably on her shoulders and striding down the hall towards her next class. 

Ben almost forgets about it through the day, focusing as hard as he can on whatever assignment or project is placed in front of him. But, as soon as he’s finished, sitting idle, it resurfaces. Devi’s smile and her hair and her obvious, glaring lack of braggadocio. He tries not to think about it, about what could be going on with her, about why she isn’t shoving it in his face. 

It doesn’t work. Especially not when he sees her in the parking lot, pacing angrily and muttering something in Tamil under her breath. She shoves her phone into the pocket of her hoodie, and lets out a brief scream of anger. 

“David,” Ben says, abandoning his task of pulling his keys from his backpack, and walking over to her. Her face is red, her hair sticking to her temples with sweat, and she has the kind of look in her eye typically reserved for WWE wrestlers that are about to make a pin. Or, something like that. Ben doesn’t really know much about sports. “ _ What  _ is happening here?” 

“My  _ stupid _ car won’t start and Triple-A is not agreeing to help me much— something about “you don’t have Triple-A” and “we only help people who have Triple-A” it’s ridiculous.” 

“I’ll drive you home,” Ben tells her, before he’s even able to come up with a good reason why. 

She looks at him strangely. “Why?” 

“Because,” he stammers, trips over his words, trying desperately to reach for something to say, “I can’t, in good conscience, leave you out here.” 

“Since when have  _ you  _ had a conscience?” 

“Just let me be nice to you, okay?”

She’s silent, looking over him suspiciously. It stings a little. He honestly thought they were past the point of suspicion in the wake of kind offers.“Fine.” 

They’re quiet the first half of the drive. Devi has reprogrammed his radio stations to the ones she likes, and he doesn’t put up a fight, but he rolls his eyes every time she jabs at his taste in music (“country? Ben, no”).

They hit a red light that seems to last forever, and Ben finally asks, “so, do you know what college you’re going to?”

“I don’t want to talk about that.” 

“Why not?” 

“I just don’t, okay!” she shouts at him, then takes a deep breath, the kind that reorganizes the geography of the Earth. He wants to talk. To know what’s bothering her, to help. But, instead, he sighs, and lets it go.

“Okay.” 

They park in front of Devi’s house, but she doesn’t move. She’s picking at the skin on her lip and staring out the window, her eyes glossy, looking like she wants to cry. This is the final straw, and his previous thoughts of  _ letting it go _ evaporate like steam into the air.

“What’s going on with you, Devi?” He asks, reaching across the center console and brushing his fingers against her elbow. 

“I got into Princeton,” she finally tells him, her voice quiet and soft and almost ashamed, “I was so  _ excited _ — and mom said she was  _ proud _ and Kamala got  _ champagne  _ from  _ somewhere _ and we were splitting it in her room while mom drove off to tell the girls at her dermatology practice.” 

“Very cool of Kamala,” Ben says, then regrets it, because he knows it’s not the right thing to say— or that right time to say it— by the look on her face.

“Then, Kamala says, and I quote, “Mohan  _ periyappa  _ would be so proud if he could see you” and I don’t know why but it just— it ruined everything for me.” She sighs, and Ben can see her reflection in the window, sees her roll her eyes. “I just wish I could tell him.”

She’s still looking out the windows, studying her neighbours bushes like she has never seen them before, and Ben is grappling for something to say. He’s never felt like this, like he doesn’t know how to comfort her, how to show her that he’d do anything it took to make her feel okay again, and the thought that he may be unable to fix this feels almost exactly like drowning. 

He has an idea, swirling around in the back of his mind, and it’s making his bones feel lighter and his blood feel like it’s carbonated. He puts the car back into drive, and pulls away from Devi’s house. 

“What are you doing?” she asks, sitting up straight, looking at him with an expression that looks suspiciously like panic, and Ben refuses to let that convince him that this is the wrong choice. 

“I just need you to not freak out,” he says, and knows that that isn’t particularly reassuring, but he doesn’t really care. 

“This is kidnapping, Gross.” 

“I’m driving, so I can’t argue with you. I have to, y’know, focus on the road and… stuff.” 

“You’re just saying that because you can’t make an argument against it!” 

“No,” he says, even though that’s exactly why he said it, “I’m saying that because we’re going to drive on the highway, and I need all of my energy for that.” 

“The  _ highway _ ?” she echoes, sounding completely, thoroughly shocked. “The last time I drove on the highway with you, you almost shit your pants!” 

“I did  _ not  _ almost shit my pants.” 

“My bad,” Devi says, sarcasm laced around every syllable, “the last time we drove on the highway, you actually shit your pants.” 

“There was no pants shitting!” he shouts, huffing. “For the love of God, chill out.” 

“If you murder me—” 

“I’m not going to murder you.” 

Devi falls silent after that, brooding and scrolling on her phone, shooting mean glances at him in five minutes intervals. She asks him where they’re going after every turn he makes, and he dodges every one of her questions. Counts his blessings when she doesn’t realize that they’ve pulled off on the highway on the exit that leads to Malibu. 

Her mouth falls open when she sees the beach. “I know where we are,” she says, mostly to herself. She whirls to face him. “Why did you bring me here?” 

“You scattered his ashes here,” Ben tells her, and puts the car in park, unbuckling his seatbelt. He’s something just short of terrified to look at her, too afraid to face the possibility that she’ll be furious with him and demand that he take her back. “I just figured, that if you’re missing him, it might help to come here.” 

“You know me better than anyone,” she says. Her words pull his face in her direction, and her eyes tell him  _ thank you, thank you, thank you _ . 

He tries to think of a response— because that’s crazy, it really is, the idea of a world where he is the person that knows her best, knows her mannerisms and quirks and pet peeves and hobbies, knows that she loves barbecue  _ and  _ her moms  _ urlai  _ roast, but if she had to choose, she’d pick the  _ urlai _ , every time, without hesitation— but Devi has already pushed her door open and pulled her shoes off and she’s running to the ocean. 

The number of steps Ben has to take to get down to the beach is criminal, but he makes it. Devi has abandoned her shoes in a hole in the sand a few feet away, her phone sitting inside of one of them. Ben toes off his shoes and pulls off his socks, leaving them where they are, and walks over to stand next to Devi.

The waves are crashing, rolling over his feet gently before being pulled back out to sea, taking layers of sand and pieces of driftwood and seashells out with it. The water is freezing, and he bites back a gasp the first time he touches it. They stand there for a long time, staring out at the horizon line where the sky dips into the water and letting the sea numb their skin, and he wonders, momentarily, how fish see the sky. 

It’s getting dark, the sun sinking lower into the ground, the world turning brilliant shades of red and orange and yellow, when Devi finally says something. 

“I want to wait for the moon to come out.” 

“Why?” 

She grabs his hand, then, pulling it out from his pants pocket and lacing their fingers together. He feels sparks shoot up his skin, his hair standing on end and he’s instantly, painfully, aware of every breath he’s taking. He doesn’t know how Devi does that to him, or when she became capable of it. It almost scares him.

“Do you remember what you told me? About what you thought about the moon when you were little?” 

It hits him, the memory of Devi crying and Devi holding him and Devi in his bed, the smell of her there for a week. The things that they had talked about— about him missing Mohan, about his grandma, about the moon. 

“Yeah, I do,” he tells her, and hopes she can’t tell that his voice has gotten shaky. 

“I started talking to the moon, after that,” she says, and he can tell that she’s embarrassed by the way she rubs at her neck with the hand that isn’t holding his. “Y’know, like it was him. It’s silly, but it just… it made me feel better. And Malibu— out here, where we scattered his ashes— is as close to him and the moon as I think I’ll ever be.” 

He wants to say something profound, something that sounds wise or comforting or like poetry, but instead, he says, “okay.” 

“Thank you, by the way.” She squeezes his hand. “For letting me stay at your house, and for driving me to Malibu— both then and now. And, y’know, for staying.” 

Devi thanking him strikes something deeper in him, a lower chord, the kinds played in haunted churches or in mausoleums in horror movies. He tries not to think about Malibu often, because thinking about Malibu makes his heart feel wrung out and empty. They had kissed— she had kissed him first— and then she went home and had pancakes for dinner and they never, not once, spoke about it.  _ It is easier that way,  _ he tells himself, when his mind starts to wonder and he thinks about how much she means to him. 

“I would do it any time,” he tells her. He means it, and he hopes she knows that. 

The moon comes out slowly, gradually, appearing from behind a tall, jagged rock sticking straight out, like the kind Ariel sings on in  _ The Little Mermaid _ . Devi sighs, a sweet, fluty, airy sound, and steps back from the rolling tide. She sits down, dropping his hand, and pulls her knees up to her chest. 

Ben sits next to her, with his hand splayed out against her back, as she tells the moon that she is going to Princeton. There’s something about her speaking, her talking to the moon like it can hear her, that makes him realize, all over again, the depth of her feelings. Her heartache. 

Something in him shifts, his energy changing, and all the time he’s spent hating Devi now feels like a waste, because he could have been using it to be her friend, instead. He could have known her, really  _ known  _ her so much sooner.

Devi bumps her shoulder against his after she finishes speaking, shocking him back into himself. “Say hi,” she tells him, a look on her face that says he has no other choices. 

He hasn’t spoken to the moon—Mohan, right now, in this moment— like this in years, and he isn’t sure how he’s supposed to do it. If there’s something specific he has to say, or if he has to introduce himself. Does the moon even remember him? And why does the thought that it may not really, really hurt him?

“Just say hi, Ben,” Devi says, like she can read his thoughts, and with her vague instructions, he starts. 

“Hey, Mohan,” he says, trying desperately not to picture Devi’s face, not to look at her, because looking at her would make something about this change, would make it feel different, “is it weird to say that I miss you? I never really knew you, but, you were always so cool—” 

“He liked being called cool,” Devi tells him, and the fact that she approves of what he’s saying makes him feel lighter, braver, more bold than he has ever been in his life.

“Devi already told you she got into Princeton, but she didn’t tell you how proud  _ I  _ am of her. And that I’m excited for her, and thrilled, and just… thoroughly elated,” he knows he’s rambling, that he’s saying too much, but he’s not sure he’s ever going to be able to stop, “she’s gonna take the world by force, this one. You did a great job with her.” He finally, blessedly, manages to stop talking, before he says something he regrets, something too personal, something dangerous and embarrassing and the scary kind of real. 

“Do you mean that?” she asks him, and he startles. A big part of him had forgotten she was even there. “What you said— are you actually proud of me?” 

“Of course I am,” he tells her, and finally— finally— looks at her. 

There is something about her eyes that makes him feel like he is a match being lit. 

They are smart and brave and beautiful and he is certain, more certain than he has ever been before, that she is able to see directly through him. That he is transparent, an open book in a glass house, something to be read and studied and analyzed, and he has never felt this way around anyone but her. And he only has a moment to consider this— consider the entire night, her conversation with the moon and her confessions to him and the feelings that she makes sink into his skin like rain— before she kisses him. 

It’s featherlight and soft, like a whisper personified, and he misses it the moment she pulls away from him, looking at him like she’s made a mistake. This is exactly like their first kiss, the one in his dad's car, and he hears himself make a noise that comes from the back of his throat, and he is kissing her again. 

Her hair is exactly as soft as he remembers it being—  _ God, he can’t believe he remembers _ — and her skin is warm, and he has one hand cupping her jaw and the other in her hair, running his fingers through it. He is pulling her closer, because he can never get enough of her, he will never have enough of her. 

He’s a clumsy kisser; Shira never really cared about kissing him as much as she did about getting  _ photos _ of her kissing him, and Devi is the only other person he’s kissed sober. He knows he’s overthinking it, he overthinks everything, but Devi is making these soft, breathy whimpering noises against his mouth, and her hands are exploring every part of his skin, setting him on fire as she does it. 

He pulls away from her, trailing sloppy, open mouthed kisses against the tender skin on the underside of her jaw, down her neck. He scrapes his teeth against her collarbone and she moans— genuinely moans, and he nearly loses his mind. 

He has an idea as he’s kissing a hickey on her skin, below her neckline, where her mom can’t see it, and he starts to chuckle softly. 

“What’s funny?” Devi asks— she’s a little annoyed, and he can tell, because she tightens her fingers in his hair— and he pulls away from her skin. The spot underneath of his lips has already started to bloom purple, and he feels a strange sense of pride over it. 

“I got into Princeton,” he tells her, and she sighs, incredibly girly. Looks at him like he is the sun rising.

“Oh, thank God.” And she pulls his mouth back to hers. 

-

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I'll leave you my love in my will. Leave a kudos and a comment if you enjoyed, as they keep me and my cat happy. And you'll get extra love in my will if you do!


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